


There's a Ghost in the Closet

by TiffanyF



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 09:31:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiffanyF/pseuds/TiffanyF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tezuka and Atobe are in England for an exhibition match and something awakens Tezuka in the middle of the night. He goes to the library to get answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Ghost in the Closet

**Author's Note:**

> Written for link621 in the Tenipuri Cross Pair Exchange.
> 
> when I was five years old, or almost five, I woke up one night and saw a young girl my age in a long white nightdress in my closet. I called my mum in and she couldn't see the girl. I've never found out who she was, although I really wanted to. Not my only ghost siting, but the one that had the greatest effect on me. I'm scared of closets to this day.

Tezuka wasn't sure what woke him up. The house - a bed and breakfast found by Atobe - was quiet and still, but there was still something very wrong. He lay on his side of the bed and thought through events as quickly as he could. They had arrived in London on one of Atobe's private jets, were picked up and brought to their lodging close to the facility they would be playing at for the next week, and, after supper, had decided on an early night to try and get onto London time as quickly as possible. Tezuka had traveled enough to know that it wasn't the time change that woke him so quickly in the dead of the night. Whenever that happened, the awakening was slower and he was usually drowsy and able to fall back asleep fairly quickly. This time it felt like he had been shocked awake and wouldn't be getting back to sleep any time soon. It wasn't sharing the bed with Atobe. They had shared enough times over the years that, even as they came into their adult growth, they never seemed to bump into each other - unless they wanted to. That was something that wouldn't be happening any time soon, if the soft snores from the other side of the bed were anything to go on. The weather outside was calm, no rain (oddly enough) or wind blowing around. The house was completely quiet.

Then Tezuka realized that he felt like he was being watched.

He slowly rolled over so he was facing the closet and the door to the room and it was all he could do to bite back the shout of surprise that was clawing its way up his throat. The closet, which he knew had been shut when they went to bed, was ajar. That was what yanked him from his deep slumber. The hinges on the closet creaked. He'd noticed that when he closed it after tucking his bags away.

Even worse, to his mind, was the small child in the long white nightdress standing just inside the door, one hand on the inner handle, staring at him. She had long dark hair and pale skin; that much Tezuka could see, but not the color of her eyes. They were shadowed and dark. Swallowing a few times, Tezuka reached behind him. "Keigo."

"Hmph. It's the middle of the night, Tezuka, what do you want?"

"There's a child in our closet looking at us."

"You're dreaming. Go back to sleep and let me do the same thing."

"No, Atobe, look," Tezuka insisted, trying to keep his voice level. "She's right there."

There was a shift behind him as the other boy slid over and poked his head up over Tezuka's shoulder. "I don't see anyone," he said. "You just didn't shut the door correctly so it popped open. They do that sometimes. Go to sleep."

"You really don't see her?" Tezuka asked. The girl hadn't shifted. She was just standing there, hand on the inner knob, staring right at Tezuka. "Young, in a white nightshirt, with dark hair."

"Next time we have to travel to one of these high school exhibition games, I'm drugging you," Atobe muttered. He let his head fall onto Tezuka's pillow and went back to sleep almost annoyingly fast. Tezuka, however, couldn't sleep. He just lay there the rest of the night, watching the mystery child as she watched him. When the sun peeked through the window, Tezuka blinked to clear his eyes and the girl was gone. The closet was still open, but there was no trace of the child.  
**********

Atobe noticed how distant Tezuka was all day, but only he would be able to notice it. They had known each other a long time, and Atobe was good at reading past the stoic look the former Seigaku captain always wore. Tezuka was going through the motions of signing in for the games and walking the tour to learn where all the courts were, but Atobe could tell that his mind wasn't really on it. When they finally had a quiet moment between meetings and when they would have to go meet up with the rest of their teams, Atobe pulled Tezuka into the corner. "What's wrong with you today?"

"Nothing."

"Don't give me that," Atobe said softly. "I know you, Tezuka. I know how to read you and there's definitely something bothering you."

"I'm just thinking," Tezuka said.

"About what?"

"Nothing."

Atobe sighed. "Tezuka."

"It's nothing you need to worry about, Atobe," he said shortly. "It won't have an effect on my game."

"Maybe I'm not worried about your game. Maybe I'm worried about you."

"You don't need to be, I'm fine."

"Tezuka, you can out stubborn almost anyone. I think Echizen might win a contest between the two of you though. Tell me what's wrong."

"I told you it's nothing. We need to go. We'll be late to meet our players."

Atobe grumbled under his breath a little and swept off. He would find out what was going on with Tezuka, even if he had to stalk the other boy until they went home again.  
***********

Tezuka used the distraction of their teams arriving to slip away and go to one of the smaller libraries. He didn't have a reader card to get into the British Library, and he really just wanted to use the computers. The problem was that he didn't know the best way to go about starting his search, or how to look for information on what he thought he had seen the night before. Knowing that Atobe hadn't seen the child shook him far more than he wanted to admit. Tezuka didn't believe in ghosts, not really. He was willing to accept that there might be more to the world than he knew about, but didn't believe in ghosts. Not yet, anyway.

He tried to search out the house the bed and breakfast was in, and found mostly ads for the current business. Tezuka had noted that it was a newer building than those surrounding it, but hadn't thought too much of it in his jet-lagged state. There was one article that mentioned a rebuild at the area, but no details on it. With a sigh, Tezuka tapped his fingers on the desk and tried to think. There had to be a way to find out who the little girl in the closet was, without sounding like a total lunatic to everyone around them.

"Can I help you find anything, love?" a soft voice with an Irish lilt asked from behind him.

"Yes, actually," Tezuka said, turning in his chair. He found an older woman, probably in her 40s, and smiled. "I'm staying at a local house just up the road and was curious about its history. Or, I suppose, the history of the house that was there before it."

The woman sat down in a chair next to him and nodded. "That bed and breakfast was built after the house that was there burned down, oh, ten years ago now," she started. "It was a nice couple who bought it and were fixing it up when it burned."

"I couldn't find any information on the fire," Tezuka said. "Was it not reported in the papers?"

"It was, but once the bed and breakfast opened up, and the rumors started, the current owners requested that as much of the information be taken down as possible," the woman said. "They were afraid it was bad for business. It shows how much they know. These days, everyone is ghost crazy and they would have trouble keeping people out of that room if the real story was more popular. But, what with the other deaths there, I guess I can understand why they try and keep the story quiet."

Tezuka tilted his head slightly. "Other deaths?"

"Let me start at the beginning. The house that originally stood on that site was built in the early 1900s and was damaged in the blitz. It was bought in 1950 and almost torn down, but there was some slight historic interest in the building, so the owners were forced to fix it up or sell it again," the woman said. "They did some very basic work and sold it again in the 1980s, and then the young couple bought it in 1994. He worked for a shipping company and she stayed home with their son and daughter. I had just started here when they bought the house and remember those two children. Such readers they both were, in here almost every day for new books. The mother, Tina was her name, was almost ready to start the son at school early because she was running out of things to teach him."

"And the daughter?"

The woman gave him an appraising look. "I had a feeling that was at the root of your questions, young man," she said. "June, that was the daughter, was five when her parents bought the house. Not quite as smart as her brother, but smart enough to be reading slightly ahead of her age group. She was in here the day of the fire, actually. I often wonder exactly what happened that night. The cause of the fire was never determined, or never released to the public."

"June died in the fire, didn't she?" Tezuka asked softly. "Wearing a long white nightdress."

"You've seen her then?"

"Last night," Tezuka admitted. "She opened the closet door and woke me up. I never felt any sense of danger from her, just puzzlement. Almost like she was wondering why I was in her bedroom."

"She was the only one to not make it out of the house," the woman said. "The father, I can't recall his name, very English though, tried to go back in for her, but the firemen stopped him. They made two attempts to get to her, neither of them successful. The fire just burned too hot too fast. There was nothing they could do. It about broke my heart when I found out about it. Such a bright light June was, always smiling and happy. She should have been able to grow up and share that light with the world, not have it snuffed out so early."

"What happened when they rebuilt the house?" Tezuka asked.

"June started showing up in that closet. It's not her bedroom, not any longer, but it's a room that is approximate to where her room was," the woman said. "A couple of people had died as a result of seeing her, much to the dismay of the current owners. I can't imagine that June would hurt them, but if they were hurtful towards her, it's possible she might have done the same back to them."

Tezuka thought for a few minutes. "What should I do about her? How could I help her?"

"You really are a sweet young man, aren't you?" the woman asked. "Is there anyone sharing the room with you?"

"A close friend of mine. He can't see her. He admitted that much last night."

"You could talk to her," the woman said. "I think poor June is just puzzled and lonely, and lost. Her family moved away to the north rather than rebuild and that has to add to the puzzlement the poor mite feels. There are strangers in her house, who don't talk to her, and strangers in her room. I can't help but think she's just lonely."

"Could I check out a couple of books?" Tezuka asked.

"I could give you a temporary card. You're not in London long, are you?"

"No, just for a week or so for some tennis matches," Tezuka said. "I'd like to check out some children’s books. Do you remember June's favorites?"

The smile on the woman's face was answer enough.  
**********

Atobe didn't know how Tezuka managed to shake him off so easily, but was determined to find his friend and find out exactly what was going on with him. He pushed the door to their room at the bed and breakfast open and stopped in shock. It took a lot to shock Atobe, but Tezuka had managed it. The other boy was sitting on the floor next to their bed, a plate of chocolate chip cookies out in front of him, untouched, along with a glass of milk and a small teddy bear. Tezuka was also slowly reading "There's a Monster at the End of this Book" aloud to an empty room. Also on the floor was a small stack of golden kids books and a few Beatrix Potters as well. "Tezuka, what are you doing?" he finally managed to ask.

"Reading," Tezuka said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Don't interrupt."

Atobe was about to reply when he felt a pinch on his lower leg. He looked down, didn't see anything other than the bruise forming there. He rubbed his leg and then shut the door behind him. There were far less pleasant things to listen to than Tezuka's voice reading aloud. Atobe sat down on the floor and waited until the book was finished. "Who are you reading to?" he asked.

"June. If you ask nicely, she might share her cookies with you," Tezuka replied calmly. He picked up "Peter Rabbit" and opened it.

Atobe decided he didn't want to know.


End file.
